Before 26-0: Indian hockey team's biggest wins before Hong Kong rout

The Indian men's hockey team broke an 86-year-old record in Jakarta after crushing Hong Kong 26-0 at the Asian Games, as the coach Harendra Singh ordered his players to "be ruthless and create your own legacy". ESPN remembers India's five biggest wins in international hockey.

26-0 (men's) v Hong Kong, Jakarta 2018

You could see it coming -- India had already scored 17 goals without a response against Indonesia on the opening day of the men's hockey competition on Monday. What followed against Hong Kong was quite merciless, nonetheless. In all, 14 Indians got on the scoresheet, and three of them had hat-tricks - drag-flickers Rupinder Pal Singh, Harmanpreet Singh and striker Akashdeep Singh. Sardar Singh and Birendra Lakra were the only two outfield players to not have scored, as India averaged a goal every 138 seconds.

24-0 (women) v Nepal, Guwahati 2016

The Indian women's team recorded their biggest win yet in international hockey against Nepal at the South Asian Games in Guwahati in February 2016, while the sport was still played with the traditional two halves of 35 minutes each. The scoring was set in motion inside the second minute by Rani Rampal, and she was one of six players to score hat-tricks; Punam Barla and Yendala Soundarya scored four goals each. This was also the first multi-nation event that drag-flick expert Gurjit Kaur featured in, and marked her first match with two successful penalty corner conversions.

Christopher Lee/Getty Images)

24-1 (men) v U.S., Los Angeles 1932

The Indian team travelled to the 1932 Olympics as the defending champions, and lived up to that billing with their performances in Los Angeles. Eight of the 15 members of the Indian team were of English origin, with independence still a decade and a half away, but their emphatic performance against U.S. was spurred by brothers Roop Singh and Dhyan Chand, who between them scored 18 of the 24 goals. Gurmit Singh Kullar scored five goals, and Broome Eric Penninger scored the other goal for India, who would go on to beat Japan 11-1 to claim their second successive Olympic gold.

22-0 (women) v Hong Kong, New Delhi 1982

The Indian women beat Kazakhstan 21-0 in their second pool game of the hockey competition in Jakarta, and missed out on equalling their best ever win in Games history by just one goal -- that had come against Hong Kong in the first match of the 1982 Asian Games at Shivaji Stadium in New Delhi. That was also the first match contested in Asian Games history by women, and India got their campaign off to a rollicking start and never stopped from there - they won all their five matches, scored 37 goals in all and conceded just once. It remains their only gold in women's hockey -- in 1998, they lost to South Korea in the final and settled for silver.

22-1 (men) v Hong Kong, Hong Kong 1954

Hockey was yet to be introduced as a sport at the Asian Games in 1954, the year Manila hosted the second edition of the Games. India, who also won the Olympic gold in both 1952 and 1956, boasted players like Leslie Claudius, Balbir Singh Senior and Udham Singh very much in their prime. The 22-1 victory came in the course of a Test series away to Hong Kong, with India the strongest team in world hockey during those years.